What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Moov2 is an award winning internet consultancy based in Bournemouth, Dorset and have an expert understanding of the ways in which search engines operate. This article is aimed at the “non-techie” business manager who needs to gain an understanding of the basic concepts surrounding the wide ranging and ever evolving subject of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is the process of taking proactive steps towards improving the ranking of your website in the major search engines. This is a somewhat simplified description, but in essence it is an improvement of your website and hence your business’ visibility that you are trying to achieve and unfortunately it is not possible to simply call up the search engines with a credit card number and ask them to place your website in the top position of their search results (pay per click (PPC) advertising is a different matter of course).
Basically, the major search engines use some extremely complex mathematical algorithms to analyse and rank your website based on search terms entered by search engine users. These search engine algorithms are kept relatively secret and look at a great number of different criteria in the process of scoring / ranking your website, and in recent years they have come on a long way both in terms of the criteria used to score sites, as well as the criteria and level of automation involved in identifying webmasters that are using unscrupulous methods to trick the search engines into dishing out elevated rankings. The latter can in fact lead to your site being blacklisted or penalised, and therefore it is sensible to satisfy yourself that you are employing a respected and reputable search engine optimisation company.
Okay, so you have an online store, which sells pink wellies (a theoretical example of course), so you go to Google or one of the other top search engines and you type in “pink wellies.” You find that your website is situated on page 85 of the search results, are you happy? Ask yourself this, when was the last time you contacted a company which you had scrolled through 85 pages of search engine listings to find? Research shows that people generally only use the first few pages of search results before loosing interest and trying another search term (or finding what they wanted on someone else’s site). You just lost a customer!
The key to success is to make sure that your website is built correctly in the first place, following best practice and designed in such a way as to make navigation around your site as simple and efficient for your potential customers (and the search engines) as is possible. Simply turning up on page one of Google may help your sales, but if your site lets you down because it looks unprofessional or is difficult to navigate, then you have unfortunately defeated the object of the exercise. There are a number of technical considerations which we won’t go into here which will affect your website’s positioning in the search engines, but frankly your site needs to operate optimally first taking into consideration your target audience. By developing a user-focussed website, with rich and relevant content which follows technical best practice, your success in the search engines should greatly outweigh the cost of achieving this, maximising your search engine optimisation return on investment (ROI) by increasing your qualified leads and reducing the sales effort.
